The house that time forgot: eerie pictures from inside ‘Red Dress Manor’, the grade II listed building left untouched since the death of its mysterious owner in the 1970s

Calcott Hall, a manor house in Wales, has lain abandoned for 40 years. But ignore the mould and cobwebs, and you could almost believe the owner had just popped out for a pint of milk, leaving her favourite red dress hanging on the wardrobe door…

From the outside it looks like an ordinary dilapidated old house. But step inside this derelict dairy farm in Llanymynech, mid-Wales, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d walked slap bang into the middle of a fairy tale.

Although no-one has lived in the house
for 40 years, all the last owner’s possessions – from love letters and
photographs to 1950s cleaning products – are still scattered about each
room, as if waiting for to be freed from a Sleeping
Beauty-type enchantment.

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Spookiest of all is the red dress found hanging on a wardrobe upstairs, which has led locals to dub this creepy place ‘Red Dress Manor’. The dress can also be seen in a photo of the last owner of the house, a woman called Ellen Jones, who died in the early 1970s.

Dan Circa, who captured these haunting photographs, told Wales Online: ‘When I climbed the stairs to enter the main bedroom, I opened the door and to the right there was a photo of the lady in the garment on her dressing table, with all her makeup and other personal items on it.

‘I then turned to the left and saw an open wardrobe with that red dress hung up. It was a very eerie feeling, as if someone was there, and I thought it was her at first glance.’

The manor house, which is officially called Calcott Hall, was built in 1725 and became grade II listed in 1953. No-one seems to know anything about the mysterious Ellen Jones or why her house has been left abandoned for so many years. All that remains are the scattered fragments of a life long forgotten and the relics of a lost era.

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